St. Marcus Day: Stephenie Meyer's Myth Vs. Reality

In the film The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Bella arrives in Volterra, Italy just in time to save Edward from revealing himself as a vampire to a throng of mortals at the St. Marcus Day festival on March 19th. Attendees of the festival, clad in red, hooded robes, march in procession bearing a statue of St. Marcus to the church in the center of town. In the Twilight world, “St. Marcus” is celebrated by mortals for having rid the town of vampires, when he was, in fact, a vampire himself. Volterra is the home of the Volturri, the lawgivers of the vampire world. Marcus is one of them. Some Twilight fans wear red on March 19th to mark this holiday.

New Moon author Stephenie Meyer borrowed the fictional St. Marcus Day from the real European celebration of St. Mark’s Day. She changed the date: St. Mark’s Day is April 25th. Because the date coincides with observances of Easter (a moveable feast; the date varies, but it generally occurs in March or April) and a number of other Eurasian spring festivals, it is thought that St. Mark’s Day is a Christianized version of a much older, Pagan observance. Edain McCoy writes, “As was done with many Pagan festivals in Europe, the early church attempted to refocus the symbolism of Ostara [the spring festival for Germanic Pagans] onto the Feast Day of St. Mark. Instead of being a festival of rebirth, the St. Mark’s imagery was concentrated on death and martyrdom, through which Christian rebirth is attained.”

St. Mark is traditionally considered to be the author of the Gospel of Mark in the Christian Bible. He’s believed to be the companion of St. Paul, the great early Christian evangelist, that the Book of Acts of the Apostles refers to as “John Mark.” A disciple of Paul, Mark is thought to have used Paul’s preaching as the basis for the Gospel. He is also remembered as the founder of the Coptic Church. Coptic tradition holds that Mark appears in the Gospels as the young man who carried water to the house where the Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles took place, as the young man who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested, and to have poured the water Jesus turned into wine at the wedding at Cana.

Mark is said to have been martyred on April 25th in the year 68 in Alexandria, Egypt. A group of local people resented his trying to turn them away from their traditional gods. They placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he was dead. His major shrines are in Egypt and Italy. His Italian shrine is the Basilica de San Marco in Venice, which is traditionally said to be the place where Mark’s remains are buried. So, he really does have a connection to Italy, though not specifically to the town of Volterra.

Perhaps because of his martyrdom, many curious traditions grew up over the centuries about the celebration of St. Mark’s feast day. In seventeenth through nineteenth century England, especially in the north and the west, folklore held that the wraiths of those who would die the following year made a procession, in the order they would die, through the churchyard and into church at midnight on St. Mark’s Eve. Some said the procession would be of coffins, or of headless or rotting corpses. Others said the procession would be of identifiable, ghost-like wraiths, and that one could sit and watch the procession as it went by and thus know who was going to die.

To see these wraiths, folklore claimed, one had to be fasting. Another legend held that one had to be present at the churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve for three years in a row, and only in third year would one see the wraiths. Sometimes, these living watchers saw their own wraiths, and died not long after. Another superstition regarding St. Mark’s Eve is that on this night, witches who had sold their souls to the devil (or written their names in the devil’s book) and wished to keep their unearthly powers had to walk three times around the church backwards, peek through the keyhole, and recite certain words, or their powers would be lost.

Another traditional St. Mark’s Eve activity was stirring the ashes of the hearth. If the ashes formed the shape of a shoe, someone who lived in the household would die during the year.

St. Mark’s Eve was one of three nights of the year associated with the dead. The others are St. John’s Eve and All Hallow’s Eve. According to some legends, on these three nights those who have died can return to the earth as spirits. This belief about All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) is a Christian appropriation of the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, the point when the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest, and also the halfway point between autumn and winter. Similarly, St. Mark’s Eve marks the halfway point between spring and summer and is associated with the Pagan festival of Ostara. St. John’s Eve, traditionally celebrated on June 23rd, is associated with the Pagan feast of Midsummer, or the summer solstice.

Not all of the legends associated with St. Mark’s Eve are associated with death, though.

The night was also one when young women would try to divine whom their future mates would be. There were a number of ways to accomplish this: by picking twelve leaves of sage at midnight, by walking nine times around a haystack while reciting, “Here’s the sheath, now where’s the knife?” or by baking a dumb-cake, eating a piece of the cake, then walking backwards to bed without saying a word (hence the word “dumb”). If a woman did any of these things, but especially if she prayed to St. Mark while doing them, she would see the shadow of, or catch a fleeting glimpse of, the man she would someday marry. However, if she went to bed without seeing such a shadow and dreamed of a newly-dug grave, that meant she would die unmarried.

These are largely English customs, though. In Italy, if St. Mark’s Day is celebrated at all, it is with feasting, drinking, and/or offering bread to the less fortunate. The custom of wearing red and having a procession seems to be Stephenie Meyer’s invention.

References

“English Folklore: St. Mark’s Eve.” http://www.answers.com/topic/st-mark-s-eve-1

“Mark the Evangelist.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist

McCoy, Edain. Ostara: Customs, Spells & Rituals for the Rites of Spring. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 2002.

“St. John’s Eve.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Eve

“St. John’s Eve, St. Mark’s Eve.” http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/st-johns-eve-st-marks-eve.html

“St. Marcus Day: Fact From Fiction.” http://twilightnovelnovice.com/2009/03/19/st-marcus-day-fact-from-fiction/

“St. Mark’s Eve.“ http://www.childrensnursery.org.uk/british-customs/popular-customs%20-%200299.htm

“The Eve of St. Mark.” http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Eve_of_St._Mark

“Twilight and New Moon fans be sure to wear your red on Thursday for Robert Pattinson and Edward Cullen.” http://www.examiner.com/x-4908-Twilight-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Twilight-and-New-Moon-fans-be-sure-to-wear-your-read-on-Thursday-for-Rob-Pattinson-and-Edward-Cullen

“Volterra, Italy.” http://twilightsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Volterra,_Italy

Amazon Vine Update + A Wonderful Vampire Dream

A Wonderful Vampire Dream 

I had the most wonderful dream last night. I was a carefree college student, and I was on a trip to a small city I didn't know very well, looking for a hotel to stay in. As I drove down the city's main street looking for a decent hotel, I saw a small pool of water (a large puddle or a small pond) and two men standing - leaning against a wall and a tree - a short distance away. I was vaguely afraid of them. When I looked down in the pool of water, I saw the reflection of a woman in the second-floor window of a house across an alley from the pool. I inferred that this woman was the lover of one of the two men, and this made me vaguely jealous. 

I chose a motel. Once inside my room, I don't think I was able to lock the door, or at least lock it to my satisfaction. The two men were outside my room and I manually held the white wooden double door shut to keep them out. They wanted me to let them in. Eventually, I felt compelled to let them in. I realized at least one of them was a vampire. He looked looked like Robert Pattinson (but not as Edward Cullen - there was no sparkling). 

Photo by Eva Rinaldi, 2012. Creative Commons license.

That part sounds vaguely menacing and not very wonderful, but the next part was what I really enjoyed. The vampire sat on the bed with me, and I noticed how beautiful his hands were. I told him so. After that, I wasn't afraid of the two strangers anymore.

I went into an adjoining room, where some other college students I knew were playing a card game at a big table. I sat in on the card game, and the two men also joined us. With all the conversation going on, we all got to know each other better. That was when the vampire told me he thought I, Erin, would be much happier as an immortal. I became very excited that he was going to change me.

I don't remember all of the details of what happened next, except that the vampire, his friend, and I were joyriding in the back of a convertible that someone else was driving. Whatever else we did, it was something frivolous and essentially innocent fun, and I loved the worry-free feeling of it all, as well as being excited that I was going to become a vampire. When I woke up, I just wanted to go back into the dream reality. 

I may have been thinking about Twilight a little bit before bed, thanks to seeing this on Pinterest. 

See? It's like the Twilight cover, only with Finnick Odair sugarcubes. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a hot thing in social media yesterday because the second official trailer is out now. But we still have to wait until November 22 to see the movie. 

Amazon Vine Update

Last Thursday was Amazon Vine Day 1 for the month of July 2013, and both of the free items I chose were books. They came in the mail yesterday. 

One was the latest Dead Is novel (paranormal, young adult mystery) by Marlene Perez, called Dead Is Just a Dream. Like the classic Nightmare on Elm Street horror films, it's about teenagers who die in their sleep. 

Its official release date is September 3, but you can preorder now. 

The second book is Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink. This is a nonfiction book (Fink is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist as well as a physician) about Memorial Medical Center, a New Orleans hospital inside the flooded zone during Hurricane Katrina. 

Again, the book is not available until September (the 10th), but you can preorder now. 

I'm 109 pages in, and it's so sad. I just read a passage in which a doctor has told a nurse that the hospital is out of oxygen tanks and she had to let an elderly patient die, but that information was wrong--the hospital did, in fact, still have oxygen. That devastating experience the nurse had of having the old man die in her arms could have been avoided. 

This is the problem with nonfiction - reality is heartbreaking. Now do you see why I want to live in a dream? 

https://amzn.to/4cBthfu

What Happens at @GoodReads Doesn't Necessarily Stay at #GoodReads

A huge topic of discussion at GoodReads is always which actors should play certain roles in the movie versions of our beloved books. There's only one answer, really: no one. What mortal human is ever good enough to compare to the way we imagine our favorite fictional characters (and, let's face it, fictional boyfriends/girlfriends) in our heads? The fun of fictional people is that they're better than real people, possessing only those flaws with which the author lovingly bestows them, as needed for the plot and/or to make them charmingly quirky.

Therefore, I have no very strong opinions on who should play Finnick Odair in Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Whoever gets to play Christian Grey, I'll be disappointed in, because he won't be my imaginary Christian Grey. I won't hate seeing Michael Fassbender or Cillian Murphy get the role, but I won't love it, either.

(Okay, I'll probably come to love it eventually, the same way I wholeheartedly embrace Dan Radcliffe - whom I just recently found out is half-Jewish, the kosher icing on a cake I already adored! - as Harry Potter and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen.)



I definitely, definitely have no strong opinion on who should play Matthew Clairmont, the medieval knight/modern vampire in A Discovery of Witches. My opinion is "nobody." Matthew Clairmont is so utterly inhuman, so otherworldly, so supernatural. How could he be played by a mere human? Still, I had to take a peek when a GoodReads discussion was labelled, "Who would you like to see play Matthew in the movie, if one were made?"

The first suggestion is Fassbender - an excellent choice. Then, a few comments down, Ms. Jackie Frye throws out Jim Caviezel as a suggestion...and I die a little, 'cause that's what happens when you take two of my sexual fantasies, jam them together and make them wrestle over who gets to be on top.

Some people agree. Some don't. One who doesn't is this chick Suay, who writes:

"Didn't really like any of the suggestions I have looked up so far. Jim Caviezel looks a bit too sleazy in my opinion (I apologize for the choice of words but can't think of a more polite word for this right now), Fassbender looks more vulnerable than I would have imagined Matthew to be. I agree with a previous comment that an unknown or less know actor would probably be best. I would have thought that a dark / sinister character would depict him best. But there aren't too many of that type around I suppose." 

...and I choke my chai latte, just a little. Oh no, book bitch*, you did not just call James Caviezel "sleazy." That is no way to talk about my own personal Jesus. I grant you the following points:

1. He's a dick to Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. Being a dick to Demi Moore is not cool.



2. He's a total dick to Ashley Judd in High Crimes, trying to kill her and all. He also makes being ambidextrous look creepy. But he gets punished for it, 'cause as Kat Bjelland sang/shrieked in "Bluebell," "You're dead meat, motherfucker/Don't try to rape a goddess."



3. His redneck domestic terrorist character in Deja Vu is completely sleazy. I give you that. He set a woman on fire. Again, he's severely punished. (He does, however, totally rock the back-of-the-neck tattoo. Makes me wanna be the chick who inked that, with the needles and the blood and the pain. Be still, my injury fetish.)



His style of acting can best be described as "intense," but "intense" can be a good thing, too. Intense can be passionate, and not just in the Christ sense. Suay says sleazy; I say man-pretty. I know I wrote in "Womb Pride," quoting Rob Bell's brilliant book Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality:

"Picture a group of high school boys standing by their lockers when a girl walks by. One of the boys asks, 'How do you rate that?' They then take turns assigning numerical values to the various parts of her anatomy, discussing in great detail how they evaluate her physical attributes...The problem is that 'that' is actually a 'she.' A person. A woman. With a name, a history, with feelings. It seems harmless until you're that girl, and then it hurts. It's degrading. It's violating. It does something to a person's soul."

So, please believe me when I say I mean no disrespect when I ask you to consider the following.



Those beautiful blue eyes.



These lips.



The cheekbones.



The hipbones.



The smile.



The really big hands...  



...and feet. 

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Matthew Clairmont? Maybe not. But definitely not sleazy. Just an intense actor and very, very man-pretty.

*Used affectionately. We're all book bitches here. No offense intended.

Ellie Goulding's "Lights" Interpreted According to MK Ultra Theory

Content Warning (CW) for discussion of child abuse.

The Bourne Identity

YouTube recommended this video to me the other day.

This video is a bit silly. Mario is essentially just reading an article he found on the (unaffiliated with him) website The Vigilant Citizen. The article is from June 2012, and it includes photos of Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart - separately - in photo shoots from glossy fashion magazines. The article makes reference to MK Ultra, a favorite among conspiracy theorists a.k.a. alternative media sources. (No judgment - remember, I like to examine so-called conspiracy theories through the lens of modern folklore and urban legends.)

Here's how the theory basically goes, according to my understanding:

 - During/after the Korean War, the U.S. government saw the American prisoners of war were being manipulated by their North Korean captors to say anti-American things. (This part seems to be factual.)

 - As a defense strategy, the U.S. began researching ways in which the human mind can be controlled. The "MK" part stands for "Mind Kontrol." Part of the U.S. government experiments under this program involved giving doses of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD, to people without their knowledge or consent. (This part is factual and documented.)

 - Although the program was alleged to have ended in the 1970s, it continues today. Actors, musicians, and other popular culture figures undergo mind control experimentation that makes them into Jason Bourne-type "puppets" who can be triggered by their handlers into performing whichever action their handlers want them to take. The process involves taking these people into a secret place where they are abused and tortured until their minds split like people with dissociative disorder. They come out with alternate personalities that don't know what the other personalities are doing. Common triggers include Disney movies, Alice in Wonderland symbolism, and Wizard of Oz symbolism (This part is speculative.)

Mario is an interesting vlogger. I don't see eye to eye with him on many, many issues. He's anti-feminist, for example, and he doesn't believe in the theory of evolution. I'll never quite understand why a certain segment of the Christian population has to reject the scientific method, but hey, that's just me (and people who believe in a rational universe). But I think he's basically coming from a well-intentioned place, even if his "facts" are intellectually questionable. I say this so you know my intention is not to mock or disrespect him. On a person-to-person level, I kinda like the guy. Like me, he was raised as a Roman Catholic. He's a French Canadian who learned English as a second language.

Ellie Goulding's "Lights"

At this point, I have been exposed to enough YouTube and blog material by The Vigilant Citizen, Mario the Vigilant Christian, and others to be able to "talk the talk" of MK Ultra, as you'll see below. If I were going to pick out a song to use as an example of mind control talk in popular media, that song would be "Lights" by Ellie Goulding.

I know you can interpret the lyrics of just about any song to mean whatever you want them to mean. In college I once wrote a paper about how the lyrics of Hole's song "Violet" could be interpreted as a warning about the dangers of alcohol abuse and another paper on how the Beatles song "I Am the Walrus" was John Lennon's plea for American authors, but especially Edgar Allan Poe, to be taken as seriously by the literary world as classical British authors. I knew those things weren't intended by the songwriters, but at the time I thought it was humorous to tortuously over-interpret things for allegedly comical effect.
So, please take this with a large grain of salt and, perhaps, a rocks margarita.

I hear "Lights" quite often on the station Tit Elingtin and I listen to on our day job as remodeling contractors. We listen to an "easy listening" station, while essentially means Top 40 radio without the rap songs. I liked the way the song sounded before I even listened to all the lyrics. I started to like Ellie Goulding even more when I heard her song "High For This (The Weekend Cover)." Then, of course, she contributed the song "Beating Heart" to the Divergent film soundtrack. It was one of my favorite songs for a while.

BUT I can't stand her song "Burn." I just find the very high-pitched section of this song incredibly annoying. Sorry. Even the best musical artists have an occasional fail. Now back to "Lights."

According to SongMeanings.com, which lets anyone add their comments on what they think the song means, the simplest explanation of this song is that it's about Goulding's childhood fear of the dark. She was afraid of the dark, so she had to sleep with a light on in order to feel safe.

Other theories think the song refers to:

- A battle with depression or another mental illness, such as schizophrenia 
- Childhood sexual abuse
- An encounter with an extraterrestrial spacecraft and/or Goulding herself being from another planet.

Lyrics

Let's look at the lyrics of "Lights."

I had a way then losing it all on my own
I had a heart then but the queen has been overthrown
And I'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat
And I'm not keeping now the strength I need to push me
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone
And so I tell myself that I'll be strong
And dreaming when they're gone
'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home
Calling, calling, calling home
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone home
Voices I play within my head
Touch my own skin and hope that I'm still breathing.
And I think back to when my brother of my sister slept
In an unknown place the only time I feel safe
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone
And so I tell myself that I'll be strong
And dreaming when they're gone
'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home
Calling, calling, calling home
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone home
Light, lights, lights, lights
Light, lights, lights, lights
(Home, home)
Light, lights, lights, lights
Light, lights
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone
And so I tell myself that I'll be strong
And dreaming when they're gone
'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home
Calling, calling, calling home
You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
You shine it when I'm alone home
Home, home
Light, lights, lights, lights
Light, lights, lights, lights...

Writers: Ash Frances Howes, Lorin Ashton, Ellie Goulding, Richard Stannard Copyright: Sony/ATV Music Publishing (Uk) Limited, Major 3rd Music Limited, Amorphous Music, Global Talent Publishing

Interpretation The first line could refer to a childhood fear of the dark: "I had a way then (when I was a child) of losing it (losing my fear of the dark) all on my own (I simply turned on my night light)."

Creative Commons image by Marple Bridge Photography 

The second line, though, seems a little strange in that context. The queen has been overthrown? That fits more with the mental illness theory - the "queen," or rational part of her mind, has been "overthrown" or overwhelmed by the illness. It also makes sense according to the childhood sexual abuse theory: she had a heart then (as a child, before she was abused) but then she learned to shut off her feelings after "the queen was overthrown," which could refer to an adult authority figure, such as her mother, being unable to keep her safe from the abuse. Of course, both mental illness and sexual abuse could be considered part of MK Ultra-type conditioning - a child who is being groomed to be a pop star is abused until her mind splits, and that way she'll be easily controllable.

The chorus starts off with, "You show the lights that stop me turn to stone/You shine it when I'm alone/And so I tell myself that I'll be strong/And dreaming when they're gone." Now this seems to be saying the opposite of what we might expect. The lights were supposed to protect her from fear of the dark, right? So why is saying that the lights "stop me?" This speaks to the alien theory, I suppose: the lights that stop her are the sudden lights from a spacecraft that appear. She is either stopped simply by curiosity, or paralyzed with fear of them, or the extraterrestrial beings have stopped her somehow. 

Some theorists, depending on their point of view, would go so far as to claim that aliens are synonymous with demons. They say that when people think they are abducted by aliens, they are really being tormented by fallen angels. If we are going with the MK Ultra theory, then we'd probably say that the handlers who perform the abusive experiments disguise themselves as aliens--or that they're somehow in league with actual aliens, who may or may not be fallen angels.

Creative Commons image by Mingle Media TV

The "I tell myself that I'll be strong" could refer to being strong in the dark when there are no lights - a simple enough explanation, although it doesn't seem to match up with "lights that stop me, turn to stone" line. What does turning to stone mean, anyway? Shutting off one's emotions so that one is as imperturbable as stone, perhaps, which fits with the abuse theory.

"Dreaming when they're gone" seems to fit this theory as well; the child cannot sleep until her abusers are gone. What would "they're" refer to in the context of fear of the dark? Nightmares, perhaps. Maybe she simply means that sleeping in the dark makes her prone to nightmares.

The "calling me home" of the chorus is why some people interpret this song to mean that Goulding herself has come from the star people. The lights call her home? Why, that's her fellow extraterrestrials coming back to claim her. Alternatively, we might say that the lights calling her home are some kind of signal or trigger that her handlers use when it's time for her to "come home" to be reprogrammed. The "reprogramming" process is painful and frightening, and that's why the singer seems to be so scared and depressed.

In the second verse, "Touch my own skin and hope that I'm still breathing" sounds a bit ominous, but fear - including simple childhood fear of the dark - could do that to a person. But then she sings something rather strange: "And I think back to when my brother of my sister slept/In an unknown place(,) the only time I feel safe." The only time she feels safe is when her brother and sister slept in an unknown place - now that seems odd. If a child were simply scared of the dark, wouldn't we expect her to say that she only felt safe when her brother and sister slept in her room with her, or when they were in the house with her - sort of a "safety in numbers" feeling? What is the "unknown place?" Is she saying that she wants her brother and sister to sleep away from where she is, because wherever she is is unsafe, and she wants to keep them safe? That line really makes it seem as if something other than mere darkness frightened her when she was a child.

In short, although this song is supposed to be about using light to ward off fear of the dark, the lyrics actually seem to be suggesting exactly the opposite - that the lights are failing to ward off the fearful thing that the dark brings, whatever that thing may be. But only the songwriters know for sure what they were thinking.

The Best Parts of Breaking Dawn (Pt. 1)

I saw The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 earlier today. Be prepared for spoilers if you haven't read the book/seen the movie yet.

Everyone seems to either love this series or hate it, but I love it. I wasn't so into the first third of Stephenie Meyer's first novel, but by the end I was Team Edward, and I devoured the last three books in huge chunks. I think I read Bree Tanner the first week it was out. I've been waiting to see the fourth movie brought to the big screen since - forever, it seems.

My verdict is this: see it twice. See it once to enjoy the story and then once again just to take in the visuals. Director Bill Condon has made a lovely spectacle of Meyer's fourth novel - and how could he not? What could be more visually striking than a vampire wedding, glamorous with sinister undertones?

Bella's dress is gorgeous, with a criss-cross pattern in the front and an impossibly delicate gauzy fabric holding the pearl buttons in place in the back. Equally well-done was Bella's eye makeup, a blend of smoky colors. I'd award it Second Best Eye Makeup in a Vampire Series, because frankly I still can't get over how True Blood's makeup artist does Jessica's eyes. I love Kristen Stewart's chestnut Bella hair color, but you have to admit, Deborah Ann Woll's "Jessica red" is very striking.

The best hair of Breaking Dawn Part 1 belongs to Taylor Lautner as Jacob and Julia Jones as Leah. Their characters go through a lot of emotional pain and suffering in this installment, but it never dulls the luster of their thick, perfectly straight, blue-black hair. They must have either an indigenous beauty secret or a werewolf one.

P.S. Taylor Lautner, I predict, will play Tane in the movie version of Beauty Queens.

The eyes have Bella, but the best-looking lips (other than Robert Pattinson's, of course) in the wedding scene belong to Bella's Forks High classmate Angela, played by Christian Serratos.

Sarah Clarke, as Esme, deserves an award for her mother-of-the-groom dress. The combination of platinum sequins and plum accents neither washed out her pale skin nor made her look too matronly.
It makes sense: literary Esmes are well-known for their fashion sense. Consider only Esme Squalor of A Series of Unfortunate Events, with her stiletto heels that were, literally, stilettos.

The Most Reformed Character award surely goes to Rosalie, as played by Nikki Reed. Rosalie pissed me off in New Moon. Yet, as soon as I saw her ferocity in guarding pregnant Bella, she won me over. What an ode to sisterhood! Rosalie is like a feminist vampire super-shero, avenging sexual assaults and standing up to fight for Bella's reproductive freedom.

That should totally be a spin-off comic book series. Somebody run that idea by Stephenie Meyer, please. Said comic book should contain lots of gratuitous shirtless Emmett. (Why not? Boys always put girls with giant boobs in their comic books.)

Images:
Deborah Ann Woll: Thomas Attila Lewis, Creative Commons
Christian Serratos: © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com
Nikki Reed by David Shankbone, Creative Commons
Femme Fatale: http://cococorsola.tumblr.com/post/6573247130/made-this-for-another-blog-but-posting-it-here

An Exercise in Cognitive Psychology

Here's me making good use of my BA in Psychology from Fancy Women's Liberal Arts College. This morning I happened to notice an article on Gather.com by Effie Orfanides called " 'Breaking Dawn' teaser trailer has fans crazy!"

Orfanides goes on to admit it's a fan-made trailer and that the official film trailer will be released closer to Breaking Dawn Part 1's November 2011 release date.

Here's the cool cognitive psych part: even though you know for a fact this "trailer" is made with clips of the other 3 Twilight movies, interspersed with clips of actors who are not Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the way the human brain works will still cause your mind to interpret these images as a unified whole, making it seem authentic.

Try it on this clip, another fan-made from the one Orfanides mentions in her article, but one which I think is of better quality.

[2024 Update: Sorry, the video is no longer available on YouTube.]

Did you fool yourself? If so, here's why: we perceive stimuli, not according to their individual characteristics, but organized in groups of information. It would take too much time and brain power to perceive every mental image individually, so our brains have created shortcuts.

One of those shortcuts in closure. You hear someone say "Shut the" and you shut the door, even though you never heard the word "door." Your mind fills in gaps with information that should logically go there.

Other shortcuts include continuity and contiguity. Continuity allows you to perceive short film clips as a unit. (Count the number of cuts in a 30-second commercial. There are many. TV relies on the principle of continuity.) Contiguity ensures that you'll perceive stimuli--again, video clips in this case--as belonging together simply because they are near each other in space and time.

Pretty cool, huh?

Window Into the Mind of An Erotica Author

I had a most bizarre and rambling dream last night, parts of which were quite sexy. Some of its influences are easy to spot. For example, when I dreamt I was a young woman, walking down the street with a gaggle of hip friends including Courtney Love, that's because I just finished reading Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy. Courtney Love was a JT Leroy fan, as were Carrie Fisher, Gus Van Sant, and other people way cooler than me.

So anyway, I'm walking down a dusty street with my crew and I stop at a little art boutique. On a spinning metal rack out from there is a painting so beautiful I know I have to have it, no matter what the cost. I don't have any money, so I decide on the spot I'm going to turn a trick to get it. (Remember, JT Leroy was purported to be a street hustler.) Fortunately, the shop owner and I are alone. He looks like Adam Levine. I get him in his back-room office and make my proposal, which he gladly accepts on the condition that he be allowed to not wear a condom. I readily agree, secretly thinking that I'm a bit nasty because I prefer the exchange of bodily fluids to the neatness of condoms. I walk away with my treasure.

The appearance of art in my dream is entirely the fault of JD Busch.

Later, the boutique owner reappears at my house, where I've already hung the painting in the attic. There is a lot of wood in this house: the rafters from the attic, the wooden railing of the stairs. He is either drunk or high, swaying where he stands and asking me questions that don't make any sense. He wants to know if we've had sex, and if so, if I raped him. I don't know how to answer. I feel guilty now.

But I know I shouldn't be feeling guilty, because I'm really just remembering an earlier incident which wasn't my fault. I'd been camping in the woods with Robert Pattinson (I'm obviously dreaming this because of writing another article about Twilight on Sunday). Inside our tent, he'd tried to grope me, though I managed to get him to stop. We ended up swimming in the lake, though, and he drowned.

When the boutique owner reappeared later, he was making out with Adam Lambert. (I did hear "Whataya Want From Me" on the radio yesterday.) The guy-on-guy action can be explained by my having received the cover art for Evernight Publishing's Indecent Encounters anthology yesterday.

My menage story "Post Op" is appearing in there, and the cover features a brunette female smooshed between two hot guys, one of whom has a sexy tribal tattoo. I don't know if La Lambert has ink, but Adam Levine does, despite his Yiddish ethnicity. One might equate the forbidden-ness of tattooed Jews with the impropriety of unprotected sex and prostitution. That's what this dream is about, I suppose: the eroticism of the forbidden. So now you have a little window into how my mind works.

Movie Review: Vampire Academy

An Odd Valentine's Day

Warning: the first part of this post is going to be a bit of a ramble. If you just want the straight movie review, skip down to Rose Is So Badass.

My Valentine's Day was an odd one. In the morning, Tit Elingtin and I went to a pancake house for a lovely Valentine's breakfast. I had a crepe stuffed with vanilla yogurt, fresh strawberries (they are shaped like hearts, after all), fresh blueberries, and granola. Yum!

Then, off to our day job, remodeling - I'm back to working as assistant remodeling since my steady editing contract ended - where we dug mud out of a semi-frozen hole. We're desperately trying to install a sump pump before the snow melts and floods the basement we're remodeling. So glamorous! I don't think I need to mention how badly I want another steady editing gig.

At 3:40, we hurried home so I could change my muddy jeans and boots. I hopped in my mom's nice, clean, warm car and we went to the movie theater. It was still early - we caught the 4:40 show - so most of the couples out on date night weren't yet there to see Endless Love, Labor Day, or Winter's Tale.

The Pre-Movie Show

We didn't quite have time to eat a salad at Panera like we originally planned, so we needed popcorn. I ordered a large Diet Coke and got a plastic Divergent cup, which I'm going to keep as a souvenir. We're about five weeks away from the Divergent movie premiere.

Before the actual movie trailers, one gets commercials. Today's commercials included a promo for the A&E television series Those Who Kill. One star of the series is James D'Arcy.





The lovely English actor has very striking bright blue eyes. He makes me sad, though, because I'll always think of him as Rufus Sixsmith from Cloud Atlas. Sixsmith/Frobisher tragic romance feels - activated.

I may have let slip a quiet "Squee!" during the trailer for the Veronica Mars movie. I loved that series, even though I only started it on DVD because I loved Enrico Colantoni so much on Person of Interest. But what's not to love? Veronica is smart, she's snarky, she can take care of herself, and she's played by Kristen Bell. (I'm still mad that Syler killed her on Heroes.) Unresolved Veronica/Logan feels - very much activated.

This was followed by the The Fault in Our Stars trailer. I already saw it on YouTube, but this was my first time seeing Hazel Grace and Augustus on the big screen. TFIOS tragic romance feels - way, way activated. I have a feeling I'm going to quietly sob my way through that entire movie.

Now for our feature presentation.

Rose Is So Badass

So: Vampire Academy. I did not read a single book in the series by Richelle Mead. Mead's website says there are six books in the original series and then a spinoff series. I only saw the trailer once on TV, so I knew very little about the movie going into it. Basically, we only saw this one because it had "vampire" in the title. I expected something like a vampire version of Hogwarts.

Which it sort of is, because the vampires do learn magic, although their magic is more elemental (earth/air/fire/water) than what Hogwarts teaches.

To sum up the story in a non-spoilery way for anyone else who hasn't read the books, I shall quote from Vampire Fun & Games: Trivia, Puzzles and Games That Don't Suck by H.W. Kondras:

"In this series, the main character is Rose Hathaway, a half-vampire who is training to be the bodyguard for her best friend, vampire princess Vasilisa Dragomir. There are two kinds of vampires in this series: Moroi, living vampires who can wield magic, and the Strigoi, undead who feed on the innocent to survive. Vasilisa (or Lissa) is the last of her family line and a princess of the Moroi. While learning how to defend her friend from the Strigoi, Rose falls in love with her instructor, Dimitri, at the Academy, and even in vampire circles, a teacher-student romance is frowned upon."

Lissa is a gentle soul, somewhat sad after her parents and brother Andre were killed in a car accident, very loving towards animals and her friends, and a little otherworldly. She's played by Lucy Fry. She's absolutely gorgeous, with an ethereal quality that reminds me of Amanda Seyfried or a young Michelle Pfeiffer.





I like Lissa, but I really like Rose. Rose is a badass who lives for protecting Lissa from the Strigoi - and sometimes from herself. She's not just a bodyguard; she's the best friend any woman would love to have. She has strong opinions, a snarky personality, and killer fighting moves, and although she's a Dhampir - human mom, vampire dad - she's more Buffy Summers than Bella Swan.





Rose is played by Zoey Deutch. She played Emily in Beautiful Creatures.

Boys, Boys, Boys

Now let's talk about the love interests, Christian and Dmitri. Christian Ozera is something of an outcast at the vampire academy, the formal name of which is Saint Vladimir's. (St. Vladimir was one of the moroi.) His parents chose to become Strigoi and had to be killed. Tainted with a whiff of evil, Christian is generally assumed to be on the same path as his parents, liable to go bad at any time. However, when he and Lissa find themselves alone together, the flirting begins almost immediately. At first Lissa doesn't return Christian's affection, and Rose tries to scare him away, but Lissa comes to bond with the man in black.





Christian is played by English actor Dominic Sherwood. He looks like the illegitimate child of Robert Pattinson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Yum.

Dimitri Belikov's introduction to Rose involves deflecting her attack by violently throwing her to the pavement. It's a thing that they have: she's always trying to attack him when he's least expecting it. But he's just doing his job, trying to protect the princess, and teaching Rose to do the same. The tattoos on the back of his neck indicate Dimitri has killed six Strigoi. His badass level is through the roof, so it's no wonder why Rose would dig him. He's her teacher, though, and he's eight years older than her - she's 17 - so their relationship can't go beyond flirtation on her end, at least until after she turns 18 and graduates.

In one scene, Rose and Dimitri fall under the spell of an enchanted necklace. She bursts into his room, where he's reading on the bed. They kiss passionately. He rips off her dress and throws it into the fireplace, then pounces on her. Before they can go too far, though, he takes the necklace off her, and the spell is broken. A small part of me thought, "Yes! Do the thing!" But most of my brain thought, "This is highly inappropriate!" I do want Dimitri and Rose to be together, but only AFTER she turns 18 and graduates.





Dimitri is played by Danila Kozlovsky, a Russian actor. He is absolutely gorgeous in the long black wig, and with his pale skin and dark hair, he looks a bit like Bill Compton from first-season True Blood. Yum.

Cruelty to Animals

I must warn you if you go to see this film, there is some cruelty to animals. It's not on-screen, but in two instances, dead animals are shown. One is a fox, and the other one is Lissa's pet cat. This did not sit well with me at all. If you're very sensitive to violence against animals in films, you may want to skip this one.

If you hurt my cat, I will jam a silver stake through you heart, whether you're a Strigoi or not.

Gabriel Byrne Is Still My Sweet, Sweet Baby

In this movie, Gabriel Byrne plays Victor Dashkov, a friend of the Dragomir family and member of one of the other twelve Moroi royal families. The twelve families take turns ruling; the queen at the moment is named Tatiana, and she's kind of a jerk. At first Victor seems like a sweet old guy suffering from some vampire disease, and the dad of Lissa and Rose's classmate Natalie. (Natalie is played by Sarah Hyland, best known on U.S. TV as Haley Dunphy on Modern Family.)





Naturally, he has a hidden agenda. I won't spoil it, but I will say that although his character in Vampire Academy turns out not to be a good guy, Gabriel Byrne is still my sweet, sweet baby. You can read more about my Gabriel Byrne fetish in "The Older Dudes I'd Most Like to See Lewd."

Overall Impression

Overall, I liked this movie. In some ways it was a rather predictable high school comedy/drama with vampire mythology tacked on, so I'm under no illusions that it's one of the greatest films ever produced. For what it was, though, it was fun. It made good on its promise, at least for someone like me who hadn't read the book. The young women who sat in the row in front of us in the theater did say a lot from the books was left out, but that's to be expected from a book-to-film adaptation. As I always say, a movie is a snack, but a book is a buffet.

Plus, the movie had a nice anti-bullying, anti-slut shaming (sexuality shaming, if you prefer) message.

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I'm not sure why it happens, but when I focus just right, I can slow time. Things around me become lighter somehow, and I almost feel the tiny particles of energy spinning inside of them. The thing is, having the ability to transform the world around you isn't all it's cracked up to be -- especially when you are running from the Valencia without any deodorant.